The shares of Novavax Inc. rose more than 20% in after-hours trading on Thursday, after the company revealed results from studies showing that the proposed COVID-19 vaccine is nearly 90% effective overall, but much less effective against a new variant.
In a Phase 3 study in the UK, the Novavax NVAX,
vaccine showed 89.3% overall efficacy, but less protection against new variants. Novavax revealed that the original vaccine was 95.6% effective against the most common form of COVID-19 and 85.6% effective against the new strain originally identified in the UK
A phase 2b study in South Africa showed that the vaccine was slightly less than 50% effective against a new variant originally identified in that country. After the 49.4% efficacy against the new variant led to a total of 60% in that trial, Novavax said it would develop a new vaccine specifically targeting that variant, which was launched for the first time in the US on Thursday. found it.
“A primary advantage of our adjuvanted platform is that it uses a very small amount of antigen, allowing for the rapid creation and large-scale production of candidate combination vaccines that have the potential to target multiple circulating strains of COVID-19,” said Novavax’s president. research and development, Gregory Glenn said in Thursday’s announcement. “Combined with the safety profile we have seen so far in our studies with our COVID-19 vaccine, as well as previous studies in influenza, we are optimistic about our ability to quickly adapt to changing circumstances.”
Shares originally fell more than 10% during out of hours trading following the release of the news, but soon turned around and rose more than 20%. The stock gained 2.2% in regular trading on Thursday and is up more than 1,700% in the past year as the S&P 500 index SPX,
is up 14.5%.
Novavax is conducting additional studies in the US and Mexico. Executives planned to further discuss the results in a conference call Thursday at 4:30 p.m. Eastern Time.